Plastic squeeze bottles for dispensing cleaners, soaps, and other liquids have been manufactured for many years and are well known. Such bottles are employed for soaps, shampoos, cleaning solutions and hundreds of other uses. Most such flexible bottles where the dispensing component is conventionally engaged to a centered opening in the bottle, are configured primarily for upright use, or use in a vertical disposition. They are unable due to the dispensing component engaged to the bottle, to disperse liquid from the bottle in and direction but substantially along the axis of the bottle to which the dispensing component is engaged.
There other flexible bottles configured to be employed in an inverted positioning, and dispense the liquid in the bottle at a direction traverse to the axis of the inverted bottle or even at an upward angle from the inverted dispensing component and bottle. Such bottles are employed for instance when communicating cleaning solution on the bottle to the underside of a rim surrounding a toilet bowl. Bottles employed for this inverted positioning are employed widely and in order to provide this inverted dispensing of fluid, have a gooseneck appearance where the opening to the bottle and the dispensing end are positioned at the distal end of a curved neck portion of the bottle.
However, bottles with curved ends leading to the opening have a number of problems. First, they are not well adapted to simply be used in an inverted positioning to for instance, disperse shampoo into one hand of a user while being held by the other hand. Due to the curved neck, they inherently dispense the fluid at and angle whereby the user must hold one hand spaced from the other horizontally, rather than in the normal fashion where the hand receiving the fluid is located inline with the longitudinal axis of the dispensing bottle.
Another more vexing problem for manufacturers of fluid products contained in such gooseneck style bottles, is that the filling neck of a bottle with a curved portion leading to the bottle opening, is disposed at an angle to the longitudinal axis of the bottle when standing upright on the bottle base. Machinery employed to fill bottles with fluid in factories work well and fast where the bottle opening is in line with the bottle axis. However, when the bottle opening is at an angle traverse to the bottle axis, and spaced therefrom by the distance of the curved portion of the bottle, special machinery is required to fill the curved neck bottles causing increased cost and a limiting of choice of bottlers to provide service since most do not have the assembly-line capacity to fill curved neck bottles.
Consequently, providers of liquids which are sold for dispensing at an angle traverse to the axis of the bottle, are left with few options as to the bottlers they use. Further, the cleaners used and dispensed from many such curved neck bottles, are the same liquid used for other cleaning tasks in the home. However users must purchase two different bottles for the same cleaner if they wish to have one for dispensing inline with the axis of the inverted bottle in a normal fashion, and one bottle to dispense liquid at an angle away from the axis of the inverted bottle. Also, manufacturers must purchase, fill, ship, and sell two types of bottles for similar or the same cleaning solution.
Still further, cleaning solutions, soap, shampoo, and other liquid product dispersed from such containers, can be hazardous to children should they come in contact with them or ingest them. Conventional containers whether for inline dispensing from an axially located dispensing component, or from a dispensing component which is engaged to a curved neck, ideally should provide a safety cap configuration to prevent children from coming into contact with the contents.
As such, there is an unmet need for a fluid container which is configured with an opening for filling and engagement of a dispensing component, which is located along the longitudinal axis of the container. Such a container should be employable for the dispensing of cleansers as well as shampoos and cosmetic products and the like to eliminate the need for manufacturers to use multiple container styles. Such a fluid container should have a dispensing component which is employable to dispense fluid to the hand or person of the user, or, in a stream at an upward angle from the inverted container. Such a fluid container should be configured with components rendering it child-resistant, to help prevent children from coming into contact with the contents or ingesting such. Still further, such a container should include a tamper-resisting component which will alert a buyer that the container has been tampered with prior to purchase.
With respect to the above, before explaining at least one preferred embodiment of the squeezable fluid container herein in detail or in general, it is to be understood that the invention is not limited in its application to the details of employment and to the arrangement of the components or the steps set forth in the following description or illustrated in the drawings. The various apparatus and methods of the herein disclosed container invention are capable of other embodiments, and of being practiced and carried out in various ways, all of which will be obvious to those skilled in the art once the information herein disclosed is reviewed thereby.
Also, it is to be understood that the phraseology and terminology employed herein are for the purpose of description and should not be regarded as limiting. Consequently, those skilled in the art will appreciate that the conception upon which this disclosure of an improved fluid container is based, may readily be utilized as a basis for other fluid containers. It is important, therefore, that the embodiments, objects and claims herein, be regarded as including such equivalent construction and methodology insofar as they do not depart from the spirit and scope of the present invention.